You wanted a new owner? Well, you got one. Now accept it.

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While technically Drayton Mclane is still the owner of the Astros, don’t think for a second that Crane and Postolos aren’t the ones giving Wade his marching orders. Wade is doing precisely what Crane wanted to do under his ownership: Play young, focus on the farm, and keep the payroll in the $60m range. While Wade may have been able to get more in the trades he made, the trades themselves were the right move.

Keep in mind though that while Pence and Bourn were great players on our team, they are merely contributors on most other teams. They were the cornerstones for us this year, but they fill no more than supporting roles on other teams. So for everyone screaming that we should have gotten the second coming of Mickey Mantle in one or both of these trades has lost perspective.

We might have been able to do slightly better, but honestly I think we did pretty well on paper. We won’t have real answers for at least a few more years. We got prospects. Some with some serious upside. Most all are now considered part of the top 10 prospects of our system. Though I admit that says a lot about how bad our system had become.

The point is that these are the right moves. Frankly this should have been done 3 years ago which is why I’m happy to see Crane involved now. Drayton just doesn’t have the stomach for this kind of thing. (By reading the comments on the Chronicle, most “fans” don’t either.)

I’ve said it a hundred times just like everyone else who has paid close attention to the Astros over the last 10 years: The Astros farm system is a train wreck that is a left over from Tim Purpura. Wade can’t be blamed for the shape the team is in now because he was being asked to piece meal a winning team on the field with no farm system whatsoever. Yes, a lot of the guys he signed were over paid and past their primes. The problem is that those were the only people he had access to. Trying to put a winning product on the field with no talent in your system, no players to trade, all while trying to reduce payroll is like trying to replace an axle on the front end of a semi with a car jack you found in the trunk of an Escort in the junk yard.

The era of Drayton Mclane is over. You hated him because he didn’t hire good people, didn’t spend enough money, and didn’t give you free beer and free tickets. Now you have Jime Crane. He will hire the best people, but he still won’t spend money or give you free beer and tickets. He will build the club from the bottom up. He will have the best scouts around and will sign high draft picks. (Like the #1 overall we’ll be getting next year.)

What I believe we will get with Crane though is something the Astros haven’t really ever had: a team built methodically from the ground up that is consistently competitive and a contender for the playoffs every year. No, they won’t be the Yankees or the Red Sox with all the best players and the fattest payrolls. They’ll be more like the D-Backs, Rays, or even…God this hurts to write…the Pirates. A winning team with a payroll under $60m.

It’s going to take some serious patience though. So, if you can’t stomach 4-5 years of losing baseball then maybe it would be best to just walk away for a while. This is the time for the true fans that accept where we are and understand where we could be headed. We are now in a phase where the fans going to the park will probably get laughed at more than anything.

The true fans of the Astros will be compared to the “sad loners in empty stadiums” like the Braves fans of the 70s, the Indians fans of the 80′s, and the Pirates fans of every year after those. It will be a tedious, and frustrating time, but at some point it will pay off.

So for all of the folks screaming that have been screaming for Drayton’s head all these years, are you ready to accept the new owner and the new way of doing things? Will you give him the time he needs to rebuild this team?